A Dark And Stormy Night
by Paula Douglas
Summary: They sat around all night with a bottle of tequila, did they? Wonder what that sounded like...


_In the third season episode Brother Can You Spare A Crime, McCormick reproaches Hardcastle when he discovers to his great surprise that the Judge has a brother, because at one time he asked Hardcastle that very question: "Remember that night when the power went out and you and I sat around all night with a bottle of tequila talking about when we were kids, and I asked you whether there were any more at home like you: any sisters or brothers." I wondered what that conversation might have sounded like, and this is what I came up with. For the purpose of accomodating the storm that knocks the power out the story is set in the fall of 1984, within hurricane season, but other than placing it some time between Ties My Father Sold Me and The Birthday Present, I left the timing a little vague. It's just a conversation, but readers who detect layers of meaning or depth where none was intended will please draw it to my attention so that I can take credit. Standard disclaimers apply: I neither own these characters nor make any profit from them. –PD_

**A Dark And Stormy Night**

by

Paula Douglas

Mark McCormick rinsed the remains of supper off the plate and set it in the dishwasher, and as he straightened he glanced uneasily out the window. He couldn't see much other than his own reflection, and that distorted by the wind-driven raindrops running in glittering streaks down the glass, but by deliberately focusing past his own image he could make out the lights of Malibu, winking on and off as the wind tossed the palm trees.

The weather guy on Channel 7 had called this the remnants of a hurricane—one that first pounded the Mexican coast and Baja—but it didn't sound to McCormick like the remnants of anything. It sounded like a hurricane in its own right. He'd experienced two such storms in Florida, but the L.A. meteorologist had emphasized their rarity on the southern California coast. Still, here it was. He could make out the white lines of the surf on the public beach running much farther inland than usual, and below the cliffs of the estate itself the waves crashed against the sand and rocks with a booming bass note more felt than heard.

The wind and rain had increased perceptibly just since he'd carted the dishes in from the dining room, and he suspected that the storm had yet to peak. He realized glumly that all the debris being torn from the trees tonight would be his to rake up once the storm moved on, and that futhermore he was pinned down here in the main house: while he wasn't crazy about spending the night in the guest room, he was even less wishful to run that gauntlet of wind and water just to regain the Gatehouse. With a sigh he turned from the window and reached for the next plate in the stack.

Later he couldn't have said which happened first, the power failure that threw darkness over him like a net or the sharp crash as something heavy hit the west side of the house, but he was out of the kitchen and into the hall before his thinking mind caught up with his reflexes, with two thoughts—images, really; he was moving too fast for coherent thoughts—burning in his brain: _They're in the den_ and _Hardcastle_. The transition from reflex to rational thought didn't check his headlong race toward the source of the noise, but the hallway door did. He rebounded off it with a grunt of pain and chagrin, groped frantically for the knob, found it, and plunged through. "Judge!" he shouted, meaning, _I'm coming_, and charged for the den. He was cautious enough now to at least put out his hands as he reached the double doors, but they were open and he paused on the landing, peering hard but futilely into the darkness. "Judge! You okay? Judge?"

There was no audible mayhem in progress. As he stood there blinking he discerned Hardcastle's form silhouetted against the window, inky black against the darkness outside, but while the Judge was difficult to see he wasn't hard to hear, and if the sarcasm was any guide, he was perfectly fine.

"Of course I'm okay. What's the matter with you? What, are you scared of the dark?"

"No!" McCormick was already regretting his precipitancy. "'Course not. It's not that. I just…I thought…What the hell happened?"

"The storm knocked the power out. Look." McCormick couldn't actually see the Judge wave at the window behind him, but the intent was obvious: the neighbors' lights too were out, as were the streetlights on the distant highway.

"Oh," he said. Then, "What was that crash?"

"A branch or something hit the west window over there."

"Oh. Again."

"Tough guy," Hardcastle muttered.

"Well, I'm sorry, Master Bruce, but around here we kind of lurch from one crisis to another. How was I supposed to know this wasn't the next one kicking into high?"

"We do not _lurch_."

"Well, now what? Does the phone work, at least?"

Hardcastle picked up the handset. "Yeah."

"Shouldn't you call the power company?"

"They probably already know. Why don't you go find the candles."

"Candles? What about a flashlight?"

Hardcastle shook his head. "A flashlight's no good for hours on end."

"'Hours on end'?" McCormick cried in dismay. "How long is this gonna last?"

"I don't know," Hardcastle said. "But they gotta send a crew out, and if a tree brought the wires down they have to cut that away, and then with all the rain there's liable to be mudslides. The roads might not even be passable. It might be a long time. Days, even," he added relishfully.

McCormick threw up his hands. "Oh, that's perfect."

"What's the matter with you? Haven't you ever gone without electricity before?"

"No, and don't tell me you have. You're not that old. They had electricity in Arkansas sixty years ago."

"Not at our farm. Not until I was in middle school. Now will you go get the candles, please?"

"Sure," McCormick said agreeably. There was a pause. "Where are they?"

"Don't you know where they are?"

"How would I know that? What, do you think I come over here at night and rifle the place?"

"You come over here at night and rifle the ice box."

"That's different. Food's community property." He considered a moment, then said confidently, "You don't know where they are either, do you?"

"Try the dining room."

"Well, that narrows it down."

"Look in the china cabinet."

"Okay. You got something to light 'em with? It's gonna be hard to find any dry sticks tonight. Are there matches?"

No answer.

"A lighter?"

Silence.

"You flunked Boy Scouts, didn't you?"

"There's matches for the fireplace," the Judge said, inspired. "Use those. And see if you can't get there and back without making any more McCormick-shaped holes in the door."

"No problem, Shecky." McCormick padded slowly off to the dining room. There he groped blindly but methodically through the cabinet, starting with the top left drawer, and while he discovered all the usual kinds of things—linens, napkin rings, silverware—there were no candles. At the very back of the last drawer his questing hand made contact with glass: a smooth, oblong block of glass—patently a liquor bottle. He withdrew it and held it up, turning it this way and that in the hope of catching some incidental light from the window, but while his eyes were adjusting somewhat to the murk it was still far too dark to read the label.

00000

"Didja find 'em?" Hardcastle asked. He could hear McCormick inching his way back through the den, and in fact see him now, a black smudge moving against the darkness.

"Nope. Found this, though."

Hardcastle recognized it the instant he felt the glass. "Hey, that's tequila!"

McCormick _tsked_. "You know, Judge, keeping a secret stash is one of the hallmarks of alcoholism."

"It's not a _stash_," Hardcastle growled. "I got this for Jack Baker's retirement party."

"Who's that?"

Hardcastle wasn't listening. "That musta been…let's see…five years ago," he mused. "In '79, he retired. Yeah."

"Who's Jack—"

"Baker," Hardcastle said. "Ah, he was a judge. We went way back. We were undergrads together at Arkansas, and we ended up at UCLA law, too, but he was finishing up just when I was getting started."

"Because you were doing the motorcycle cop thing?"

"Yeah. No. That was after I got accepted into the law school. I'd already been on the force for a couple of years. They didn't let rookies join that outfit. But Jack went straight from being a Razorback to a Bruin."

"So why'd you hide the tequila behind all the napkins? I don't remember Sarah having a taste for the hard stuff."

"I wasn't hiding it from Sarah, wiseguy. You're not the first parolee here, you know."

"Beale?"

"Nah, there was another guy. He was just a day camper, but he had access to the house because before he screwed up his life he was a general contractor, so he'd do odd jobs in here once in a while. I didn't want to lead him into temptation."

McCormick frowned. "But you never took the bottle out. Did you forget to give it to your friend?"

"Nah," Hardcastle said sadly. "Nah, Jack never made it to the party. He never even made it to retirement. He was driving home from the courthouse after his last day, and his car slid in the rain—he lost control."

"Wow. I'm sorry, Judge."

"Yeah, he was a great guy." Hardcastle was silent for a moment, thinking, but then he recovered and said boisterously, "Hey, you know what we'll do? Grab a couple a' shot glasses. We'll drink to him now."

"Great!" This was an assignment McCormick didn't have to guess at. He knew where the shot glasses were. Returning, he set them on the desk and plopped into the nearby chair. Hardcastle poured carefully. "To Jack," he said, "wherever he is."

"To Jack," McCormick said, a little diffidently, and they tossed back the shots. When McCormick could speak again he gasped, "Judge, that is the _worst_ tequila I have ever had in my life!"

"Hey, I said Jack was a great guy. I never said he had good taste. This was his favorite brand."

"His favorite brand was Ronsonol?"

"Cheer up, kid. The great thing about tequila is, the more you drink, the less you mind the taste."

"That's true. Better fill her up again." When the second round of gasping and snorting subsided there was a lull. McCormick shifted restlessly. "Well, now what?" he said. "You wanna tell ghost stories?"

"Do you know any ghost stories?" Hardcastle asked.

McCormick considered. "No. Well, one. But it's not really a ghost story. It's more like a date story. You know, to freak out the girl you're in the car with, so she snuggles up to you for protection?"

Hardcastle sighed. "Let me guess: there's an escaped serial killer who's been seen in the neighborhood, and—"

"I don't believe you! _You_ know that story?"

"You know what one of your problems is, McCormick? You think your generation invented sex."

McCormick laughed. "Not exactly. It's just hard to picture you…you know—"

"Careful," Hardcastle rumbled.

"I was going to say, 'to picture you as not sixty.'"

"That's ridiculous," the Judge scoffed. "I wasn't born this age."

"I don't know," McCormick sounded doubtful. "A 12 year-old Milton who spends his summers touring every appellate court building in reach? That's pretty elderly."

"It's not elderly, it's focused."

"It's odd."

"That's not all I did in the summer, you know."

"Yeah, well, besides your field trips and submarine races, what did you do?"

Hardcastle shrugged. "Spent a lot of time fishing, hunting, playing basketball…"

"Fishing? For what?"

"Anything that bit. Catfish, bluegills, crappies, bullheads…"

The darkness made it impossible for McCormick to tell whether Hardcastle was putting him on. "Are you making those names up?" he asked suspiciously. "'Crappy'? 'Bluegill'?"

"Not 'crappy,'" the Judge corrected. "It's pronounced 'croppy.' They're kinds of sunfish." He waited for a glimmer of intelligent understanding, then sighed. "Never mind."

"What about 'bullheads'? I _know_ you made that one up."

"They're like catfish, only smaller, and they don't eat as good."

McCormick curled his lip. "You ate the fish you got out of a pond?"

"Crick."

"Creek."

"Crick. Of course we ate 'em. They're free, and back then the water was clean. 'Course," he added parenthetically, "there was a while there where you wouldn't want to eat stuff you pulled out of there, but they've cleaned the water up pretty good now."

"I wouldn't eat anything I 'pulled out of there' unless 'there' was the freezer at Von's."

"Boy, you're something else, you know that? One of these days you oughta get out of the big city and see what real life is like. Hey," he added, struck with inspiration, "that's what we'll do: I got a friend with an outfitting business up in Oregon. He can take us somewhere real nice and wild. Get back to nature and all, experience a little Americana for once in your life. You'll love it."

McCormick groaned. "Don't do me any favors. 'Nice and wild'? That's a contradiction in terms."

"What, haven't you ever been camping? Didn't you ever do anything like that when you were a kid?"

"Nah, I never left Jersey."

"Well, New Jersey isn't all concrete sidewalks. What about the Ramapos?"

"Who?"

"Oh, for crying out loud. What about Boy Scouts, or Cub Scouts? You ever do anything like that?"

"No. I mean, I watched Davy Crockett on TV, and I thought he was cool, and I kind of wanted to be a Cub Scout for a while when I was in grade school. In second grade Scott Brunswick was in the wolf den, and I was kinda jealous of him because he got to wear the uniform to school on Fridays. That was the day they had their after-school meetings. But we couldn't afford it, and besides, my mom worked more than one job, so she didn't have time to take me to things like that."

"That's too bad."

McCormick shrugged. "I guess. But it's not like it scarred me for life or anything, not being in a den. I didn't even really know what Cub Scouts were or what they did. I just thought the uniforms were kinda cool."

"Well, look how that worked out: you got to wear a uniform after all."

"Very funny." McCormick fell silent, thinking. Then he said, "You know what we did do a lot back in Jersey?"

"What?"

"Stickball."

"Stickball?"

"Yeah. You know." Hardcastle obviously didn't. "Didn't you play stickball when you were a kid?"

"Nope. Never heard of it."

"Well, maybe it hadn't been invented yet. Like fire."

"If I could see I'd throw this glass at your head," the Judge growled.

McCormick laughed. "Why don't you refill it, instead? Stickball's kind of like baseball," he went on after the latest round, "only we didn't have room for real baseball games in the city, and most of us couldn't afford real baseball equipment. So you had to make do. We used broom handles for bats—that's why they call it stickball. And we didn't use regular baseballs, because they were too expensive. We had Spaldeens."

"Spaldeens?"

"Yeah. Well, we called them that, but really they were Spaldings. You know, the company, Spalding, that makes sports stuff? I don't know why we called them Spaldeens, instead, but that's what everybody said. They're little rubber balls. Like if you took a tennis ball and didn't put the fuzzy stuff on it. Anyway, they were cheap, and we all had them, and they bounced great on the concrete. There was another company that made Pensie Pinkies, but—"

"Now _you're_ making stuff up."

"No, really. A company called Penn. That's why we called them Pensies, and they were pink, so…But they were cheaper than Spaldeens, so we kind of looked down on them. You take your status symbols where you can get them, you know?"

"Didn't you say one of your friends had a hardball?" Hardcastle asked.

"Tommy Yckanetti. Yeah. He wasn't my friend, really, he was just one of the kids on the block. He was a year older than me. His dad was a limo driver for some rich guy, and Tommy was completely stuck up about it. Plus he had the hardball."

"So stickball's like baseball without the bat?" Hardcastle said, not interested in Tommy Yckanetti's ego.

"Mostly. But not exactly." Warming to his topic, McCormick explained, "What you do is, you take a piece of chalk and you draw a square on the wall in an alley or on the side of a factory or something, right? And then you make a big 'x' inside the square, to connect the corners? Then the batter stands in front of the square. If the pitcher throws the ball and the batter doesn't swing and the ball hits the chalk, it's a strike. If the ball doesn't get chalk on it, it's a ball. 'Course, if you swing and miss that's a strike, too, just like baseball. Where I lived we used three strikes for an out, but not every place was like that. The rules kind of depended on where you lived. I remember one summer Dave Fish's cousin from Boston came to visit him, and he said they used hockey sticks instead of broom sticks and two strikes was an out." He smiled, reminiscing, then shook himself and continued. "Anyway, where I lived we used three strikes. If you hit the ball and it landed on a roof or a fire escape or a porch or something, it was a home run. If it broke a window, that was a home run, too."

"Little vandals."

"Yeah, I guess we kinda were. But it wasn't on purpose or anything, you know. Oh, the best part: you didn't have to tag a base to get a guy out. You just had to hit him with the ball."

"You threw the ball at the runner?"

"Yeah. We called that monkey ball," McCormick said, and Hardcastle laughed. "I know, it sounds kinda goofy now, doesn't it? But man, we sure took it serious back then."

"How old were you when this was going on?"

"Oh, from the time you can pick up the stick, you have to play stickball. I bet I was in high school, the last time I played."

"Who'd you play against?"

"Just other kids in the neighborhood. It wasn't organized, like Little League or anything. It was all after school. Sometimes during school, if we were cutting classes. But we'd have neighborhood rivalries, like the Italians against the Puerto Ricans, and the Puerto Ricans against the Irish. I was on the Irish team," he added unnecessarily.

"No kidding."

"Yeah. But it wasn't like nowadays, you know, with gangs and that, just friendly rivalries. Well, mostly friendly."

"Sounds like fun."

"Yeah, it was," McCormick supposed. "I mean, looking back at it now, I guess I was having fun. I didn't think about it much then, that we were deprived or anything. We knew there were people with more money, but a lot of people had less, too, so most of us just thought how we were was pretty normal."

"Well, that's how it goes your whole life, kiddo: somebody's always going to have more, and somebody's always going to have less. My dad used to tell me to measure up to my own standards and not worry about the other guys ahead or behind. He said if I did a job I could be proud of, then I'd be ahead of ninety-nine percent of the competition anyway."

"Smart guy."

"He was. He was right, too. That's how it's been."

"What about your mom? She ever give you words of wisdom like that?"

"Sure. I remember when I was really young—I mean, two or three years old—and she was reading me a story—she used to read to me a lot—that had a lion tamer in it, and I said I wanted to be a lion tamer when I grew up."

"A lion tamer, huh?" McCormick said, grinning at the thought of a very young, very earnest Milton making this declaration. "'_Be careful, Jim_.'"

"Yeah. Now, we were poor, and I mean dirt poor, but she said, 'You can be anything you want to be.' Just like that, like it was the most natural thing in the world for a kid from Arkansas to be a lion tamer. And she was always like that—they both were. They never limited me, or my ideas about what I could do. They made sure I knew that I could do anything I wanted."

McCormick considered that, then said, "What about the rest of the Hardcase clan? Do you have any brothers or sisters? Any more at home like you?"

"Nah, no sisters; nothing like that. What about you?"

"No, it was just me and my mom, after Sonny left."

"That musta been kinda dull."

"Actually, I liked it. I mean, I didn't know any better, so I didn't miss having siblings, and then some of my friends were always fighting with theirs, so I didn't think I was missing out much. Besides, my mom could hardly afford to feed the two of us, you know? I guess I was kind of glad there was no one else—not that I thought about it much."

"You weren't bored or anything, ever?"

"Huh-uh. That's the thing about the big city, Judge. There's always something going on, something to do, somebody to hang around with. What did you do in the wilds of Arkansas when you got bored?"

"It wasn't the frontier, you know. And on a farm you keep busy all the time. I had to help around the place, anyway. You know: do chores? Sound familiar?"

"I had chores," McCormick said defensively.

"Like what?"

McCormick had to think about that. "I had to take out the garbage," he said finally. "And make my bed."

"That's not chores. That's civilization."

"Okay, John Boy, what did you have to do?"

"Well, for one thing I had to help with the animals."

"What, like feed the dogs, stuff like that?"

"The dogs, hogs, chickens, cows, mule."

"A mule, huh? Bet he was a big influence on you growing up."

"Very funny. She was a girl mule, anyway. Her name was Lucy. Betcha don't know where mules come from," Hardcastle added.

After only the briefest pause McCormick said, "Judge, I wasn't going to bring this up tonight, but I think it's time for you to hear this: When a boy mule and a girl mule love each other very much—"

"You're about as funny drunk as you are sober, you know that?" Hardcastle said dryly.

"That's progress, then," McCormick said good-naturedly. "Actually, I never gave it a lot of thought, but if I had to guess I'd say you put a girl mule and a boy mule in a stall together and let little baby mules happen."

"Then you'd be wrong. Mules are hybrids: you get a mule by mating a horse and a donkey together. The mules themselves are sterile." And in the uncomprehending silence, "That means they can't reproduce with each other and make little baby mules."

"Get outta here."

"Why would I make that up?"

"To screw with the city boy."

"Fish in a barrel, kid," the Judge said, with a shake of his head. "It's too easy."

McCormick sniffed. "What'd you have a mule for, anyway? Did you ride it?"

"Her. Sometimes. But she was for pulling the plow, and pulling logs when we cut timber for firewood. We didn't get a tractor until I was almost out of high school. When I got old enough to drive her I used to work the fields with her, but before that it was my job to feed her, and make sure she had clean water, and brush her off after she came in from plowing the fields all day. I had to take care of her harness, too, because it was all leather, and it would get sweaty when she worked. You had to clean that off or it'd ruin the leather."

"Mules sweat?"

"Sure they do. Don't you remember seeing those racehorses when they came back from a race, or from a workout, how wet they were? That white foam on their necks? That's sweat. It's the same with mules."

"So you had to clean the harness? That sounds like a blast."

"Well, it wasn't my favorite thing," Hardcastle admitted. "You had to wipe it all down and hang it up just so, and the stitching was cotton, so that had to stay dry or it'd rot, and then you'd have to replace pieces of the harness, and that could be expensive."

"What about the other animals?"

"Well, we had hogs, chickens—lots of chickens. I had to feed them, too, and collect the eggs in the mornings before school, but that was the easy part. The hard part was butchering them."

McCormick was aghast. "You had to kill your own pets?" he cried.

"They weren't pets, McCormick, they're livestock. They're only there so you can eat them."

"That's horrible."

"You don't know the half of it. Once a week my mother would butcher a couple of chickens, and when I got old enough I had to help. She'd wring its neck—"

"I don't want to hear this."

"—or chop its head off, only then sometimes they'd run around flapping and bleeding all over everything, so it was usually wringing."

"I'm gonna barf."

Hardcastle carried straight on. "Then you'd have to put the thing in boiling water, you know, to loosen all the feathers, and then pluck the feathers out by hand, and it was always a mess. They'd get everywhere. In your mouth, in your nose…And the smell. It was terrible. I used to hate Saturdays. And chickens."

"You know, now that you mention it, I don't think I've ever seen you eat chicken."

"Well, you pluck a couple hundred birds and see how bad you want a drumstick after that."

"I don't even want to know about the hogs."

"You're right. You don't."

"You didn't eat the dogs, too, did you? Or shouldn't I ask?"

"Of course not. The dogs were for security, and for hunting."

"Security?" McCormick said in surprise. "Really? In that rural Eden you had crime?"

"No, we didn't have crime. We had dogs. They'd keep the tramps away. They'd bark at anyone coming from a mile away, so no one ever had a chance to steal anything. And a couple of them were real good hunting dogs. We had two that my dad got in trade for some work that he did for a guy who raised hounds. There was a black and tan and a blue tick. They were something else."

"A black and tan and blue tick what?"

"Hounds," Hardcastle said. "Coonhounds. A black and tan coonhound and a blue tick coonhound. Blue tick is a color," he added, forestalling the obvious question.

"Oh. Is that all they could hunt was raccoons?"

"No, no, they'd hunt anything that moved, really, but raccoons are what they're bred for. But they'd scare up rabbits for us, too. You couldn't take them squirrel hunting, though, or you wouldn't see a squirrel all day. The dogs'd scare 'em off."

"Don't tell me all that was for food, too."

"Sure. Not the raccoons. But my mother made a great rabbit stew. We'd go after the raccoons for their pelts—"

"Pelts?"

"Pelts. Skins. Twenty-five cents each, mostly, or up to fifty cents for one with really thick fur."

"A whole fifty cents, huh? Most kids just mow lawns for spending money."

"No lawns there, kiddo."

"So you were quite the Grizzly Adams as a kid, huh?"

"Who?"

"A mountain man. Like Daniel Boone."

"I don't know about that. But we had to eat. And back then, out in rural areas like that, we didn't have supermarkets down the block with five hundred kinds of cereal on the shelf."

"Did you like it?"  
"What?"

"Growing up like that. Living there."

"Loved it," Hardcastle said decisively. Then he added, after a pause, "Well, most of the time."

"Except on chicken day, you mean?"

"Right. But other times, too." The Judge paused, collecting this thoughts, then said, "It's just that I always wanted to be doing something else. Something more. With my life, I mean. And my folks always wanted me to have a better life than they had, so they made sure I did good in school, and that I knew how important it was, that it was the only way to get out of Clarence. So even when I was having fun, in the back of my mind I knew it wasn't where I wanted to stay. It makes you kind of tense, I guess, so when I look back on it sometimes I wish I'd known then how things were going to be now, so that I'd enjoyed myself more at the time. See?"

McCormick nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, that makes a lot of sense."

"That's the tequila getting to you, kid."

"Why, because you made sense?"

"Yep."

"Hah," McCormick laughed. "Why don't you pour me another shot of sense, then?" When that was done they lapsed into a companionable silence, each lost in his own reflections. Finally McCormick, resuming the thread of the conversation, said, "But I know what you mean about wanting to get out of a place. Except…well, when I was a little kid all I wanted to do was think about cars. In between stickball games, I mean. I drew cars, I watched cars on TV, I wrote stories about cars for school assignments. You wanted to be a lion tamer? Hell, when I was five I wanted to grow up to be a car."

Hardcastle laughed.

"But I don't remember feeling that pressure like you did."

"It wasn't pressure, really…"

"Well, yeah, it was, kind of. Pressure from your goals, right? Pressure from your ambition? From your expectations for yourself?"

"I guess so."

"Well…I didn't really have that. I mean, my mom used to make sure I did my homework, because she said getting an education was really important. She said it was okay to want to be a racecar driver, and she said if that's what I wanted, then that's what I should try to do, but she said there's a lot of little boys who want to drive racecars, and only a few of them make it, so I should do good in school. Just in case." He shook his head. "I tried to do like she wanted, but the truth is…well, the truth is that I didn't really believe her. I mean, I really had no doubt at all, ever, that I was going to make it to the Indy 500. I don't know: maybe when you're delusional you don't feel pressure. I wish I'd listened to her. When I was little she'd read to me, to try to get me interested in books and things besides cars. It didn't take. In high school I liked physics, because I knew you had to know that stuff to design cars. Man. I was such an idiot. If I couldn't make something about cars, I didn't want any part of it."

"Sounds to me like you were focused, too. Besides, that's the nature of kids. And that's what they make parents for, to be the voice of reason."

"Yeah. She really tried with me. She knew how hard it was to not have much education, to not have any options. Anyway, when I got a little older, like into high school, and had that physics class and some other things, I actually started to see her point, you know? But then she got sick, and after that…well, after that the valedictorian didn't have to worry about competition from me." He reached carefully for the bottle. "Want a refill?" he asked. "I need a drink." He poured, pleased with himself when a relatively small fraction of tequila ended up on the desk. After a long silence in which Hardcastle began to wonder whether it was safe to change the subject McCormick said quietly, "She was always happy, you know? Not that she was having a great time working two jobs to support us, but she was just…I don't know…cheerful. She never went around acting mad or put-upon, and she was always singing or humming something around the apartment. She said we were lucky, because we had everything we needed to get by. Maybe she was happy that she got rid of Sonny, huh?"

"Maybe," Hardcastle said noncomittally.

"She didn't go around mad," McCormick said again. "But she sure got ticked off at me sometimes."

"Like when you came home with a bad report card? Stuff like that?"

"No, then she just looked disappointed. She got mad when I wasn't honest. Lying was the big no-no. I could screw up, but I couldn't lie about it. Like one time when I was little I took a pencil and drew all over the closet door in my bedroom because the pencil made a cool sound on the wood. She freaked when she saw the door, but when I said my friend Vinnie Greco did it I _really_ caught it. No stickball for a month after that."

"Seems fair."

"Yeah." McCormick sighed. Then with an obvious desire to change the subject he said, "What about you? Did you ever get into trouble when you were a kid, or were you a saint then, too?"

"I've never been a saint, McCormick."

"Yeah, sure. You were a hell-raiser, right?"

"Nah. Just the usual kid stuff. Fighting over girls, things like that."

"'Meet you at the flag pole,' right?" McCormick quoted.

Hardcastle grinned, a little surprised that he'd remembered. "That's right. That didn't bother my dad, of course, but it used to drive my mother crazy. She was the one who had to wash the blood out of my clothes. But the one time I really remember her going nuts over something I did was in fourth grade. My friend Bobby Schram and I were playing Cowboys & Indians and we needed something for war paint."

McCormick by this time was very willing to be amused and he was already grinning. "Yeah?"

"Well, near where we were playing there was an old black walnut tree that had dropped a lot of the fruit, okay?"

"Black walnuts?"

"Yeah. The nut's inside a husk. A round green thing about the size of a golf ball, and when you break them open to get the nut there's a kind of dark brown-colored juice in there. In the husk. Well, we used the juice to paint ourselves all up like Indians, with war stripes and everything, and then we got a little carried away and drew beards on our faces, and mustaches…it was a big mess. See, we figured we'd just wash it off when we were done playing, but that stuff stains your skin that dark brown, and it takes _days_ to get it off. The problem was, this was a Sunday night, and we had school the next day. My dad just about fell off his chair laughing when I walked in for supper that night, but my mother was furious. She tried everything in the book to get that stuff off, but there was nothing doing."

"So you had to go to school like that? With a brown beard painted on your face?"

"Yep. All covered in walnut stains."

"That must've been traumatic."

"Nah, we even kind of Tom Sawyered the other kids about how real Indians used that stuff to make their war paint. It actually started kind of a trend in the fourth grade class for a while. But it was a month before my mother let me play with Bobby Schram again."

"A whole month?"

"Yeah, well, that wasn't the only thing that Bobby and I did that ticked her off. She thought he was a bad influence on me."

"Somebody was able to influence you? I don't believe it."

"Very funny. Bobby was the one who dared me to jump on the hay bale."

Blank silence from McCormick, and then he said, "'Splain that one, Kemo Sabe."

"Well, about a week after this thing with the walnuts Bobby dared me to jump on to a big hay bale back behind the barn."

"Yeah, so? What's so hard about—wait a minute. Jump on a hay bale from where?"

"From the passenger window of my dad's truck."

"What happened?"

"I jumped on the bale and bounced off and hit the ground. I broke my nose."

McCormick laughed so hard at that that he finally gasped, "I can't breathe."

"I thought the bales looked soft."

"Stop it."

"Yeah. She grounded me for a couple of reasons after that, but the thing she was really mad about was that I didn't use my head—"

"Except for the landing."

"—and let somebody else talk me into something. She said if somebody dared me to swim the Mississippi, would I do it?"

"I heard a version of that question once or twice."

"I'll bet."

"Well? Was that your big epiphany, that lesson from your mom?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, did getting grounded for taking someone up on a dare—is that what turned you into the caped crusader you are today? Or did you get bit by a radioactive spider?"

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Come on, Judge. I know you were born focused, or you wouldn't have been lurking in the halls of justice taking notes when you were ten. Were you born able to bend steel in your bare hands, too? Or is that something you had to work at, like being pleasant?"

"I'm gonna over look that last remark, because drunks can't be held accountable for their actions. But I'll tell you something that did have an influence. After the thing with the walnuts, after my mother decided I wasn't grounded any more, I was walking to school with Bobby. Their farm was about a mile closer to the school than our place, and he'd wait for me at the end of their driveway, and then we'd walk the rest of the way together." McCormick was silent, listening. "One day we decided to take a short cut through some woods. There was a path cut through the middle that came out on the road by the school. Well—you remember how hilly it is around there, right?"

"Sure."

"Well, the path went up a slope and then down through a little valley—a holler, they call it in some places—and then back up again before you got to the road by the school. When we got to the top of the hill we could see down into the little valley, and there were three kids down there with a dog, and with a pellet gun. They were two grades ahead of us: big kids. It wasn't their dog. It was a stray they'd found: skinny and all. They'd put a rope on it, and they were going to tie it up to a tree and shoot it with the pellet gun. Target practice. Nobody'd hear it, you know, because of them being down in the valley, and pellet guns don't make a big report like a rifle or something, anyway."

"What'd you do?"

"Bobby said we should get back to the road—back the way we came—and go the long way around. He didn't want to get in trouble. But he came with me, anyway, right up until the first guy took a swing at me, and then that was too much for him, and he took off."

"But you didn't?"

"No. I was too mad to run."

"So the Lone Ranger overpowered the hardened desperados and saved the day and the dog, right?"

"Not a chance. I got the snot kicked out of me. But the dog ran off during the fight, and that was the main thing."

"They beat you up?" McCormick wasn't used to seeing Hardcastle lose a fight, even a grade school fight.

"Yeah. Pretty good, too. Blood everywhere…Anyway, after they left I was thinking that I was glad the dog got away from those jerks, but that I'd think twice before I put myself out on the line like that again. Anyway, when I got to school they sent me home, of course, for being late and for having been fighting, and for bleeding all over the place, and I missed a test we were having that day. When my father found out later that the teacher wouldn't let me make it up he went down to that school house and raised some Cain about how unjust it was to penalize me for having done the right thing, with a little 'my taxes pay your salary' thrown in on the side. It was the talk of the town for a while, how my old man backed the teacher into a corner and threatened him with a twelve-gauge and everything."

"Well, you didn't fall far from that tree, did you?"

"Oh, that was all a bunch a hooey. You know how stories get all warped out of shape when people retell them—how they get it wrong when they gossip. He didn't take the twelve-gauge to the schoolhouse. Come on."

"He took the forty-five, right?" McCormick said, grinning, and knowing that he was being scowled at.

"No," Hardcastle growled. "But I got to make up the test, and when my dad backed me up like that it really made a big impression. I looked up to him a lot, you know, so when he said I was right it made me reconsider: Maybe putting myself on the line and doing the right thing wasn't such a bad idea after all, even when the odds were maybe a little long."

"_Maybe_ a little long?"

"A lot long, then. It shouldn't matter. Once you get in the habit of thinking like that it gets to be second nature after a while." The Judge paused. "That's your epiphany, I guess. If you want to call it that. Happy now?"

"You do realize that you're not normal, don't you?" McCormick said affectionately.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Hey, I don't mean it in a bad way. I'm just saying."

"How is that not normal? Hey, anybody in Clarence—well, most of 'em—would have done the same thing."

"Your friend Bobby didn't."

Hardcastle snorted dismissively. "He was just a little guy. I'm telling you: ninety percent of the people I grew up around would have done the same thing."

"Judge, I was there, remember? You will never convince me that you were the rule, not even in Camelot, Arkansas."

"Clarence."

"Whatever." In spite of the darkness, McCormick could guess at his friend's discontented expression. "How can I explain this?" he said. "Look: _normal_ people run away from danger. When _normal_ people hear shooting, they hide under a table. When _you_ hear shooting, you shoot back, and you run _toward_ the danger."

"Normal people don't drive their car around in a circle at two hundred miles an hour, either."

"It's an oval."

"Whatever."

"So we're both abnormal. Is that what you're saying?"

"I think I'm saying that you are. What's your point, anyway?"

"I have one."

"Well?"

"I can't assess it now, is all."

"Access."

"Yeah. That either."

"Booze drove it right out of your head, huh?"

"Yeah. Sounds like a drinking problem, doesn't it? Better have another drink. Set me up, barkeep."

Hardcastle poured another round, then said, "That's last call. I'm cutting you off."

"One for the road, then."

"That _was_ your one for the road."

"C'mon, Judge, we can't quit now. There's still stuff left in the bottle."

"That's the best time to quit. I'm gonna have to listen to you whine all day about your hangover, as it is. Come on." He caught McCormick by the arm and hauled him out of the chair by main force.

"Ju-udge…Ow…Damn, Judge. You gotta take it easy with those weights. Hey, don't you wanna eat the worm?"

"Eat the worm," Hardcastle repeated derisively. "They don't put worms in tequila."

"Yeah, they do."

"No, they don't. They put 'em in mezcal. Look at you: Here I go and teach you everything I know and you're still stupid." He steered McCormick to the couch and turned to cast about for a blanket.

"Nex' time I see your cop friends, I'm gonna tell 'em you're a lightweight."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah…" The Judge turned, blanket in hand, and would have tossed it toward the couch, but McCormick was already snoring.

Hardcastle shook his head. "Lightweight," he said.


End file.
